Hi. Stumbled upon and unsure of its meaning.

What does the word 'constitution' here refers to ? 🤨

And; any majority has to start with one or few use events; does it mean that it is a wrong word until half +1 use such and then becomes right ?

It means the English don't have rules that stay inert over time. They change according to the needs and social whims of the era. Common contemporary usage of a word becomes its de facto definition. English dictionaries are records of historical usage, and not authorities. A word's meaning may change over time due to a change in popular usage. Does that make sense?

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by StringJunky

Awesome!

😉

So good I think I will post it twice

4 minutes ago, geordief said:

So good I think I will post it twice

Yes, that illustrates the fluidity and kaleidoscopic nature of English evolution perfectly.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by StringJunky

1 hour ago, Externet said:

Hi. Stumbled upon and unsure of its meaning.

What does the word 'constitution' here refers to ? 🤨

And; any majority has to start with one or few use events; does it mean that it is a wrong word until half +1 use such and then becomes right ?

Constitution in the quoted passage means principles for the governance of the country. The USA has a written constitution, which can be consulted by legal authorities. The UK does not. It has a set of traditional understandings about the powers of the two houses of Parliament and the roles of the monarch and his government ministers and a number of laws codifying aspects of this, but there is no collected definitive body of rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom

It's not really very relevant to the discussion about the language, except that it is the same idea: nobody has bothered to regulate it officially. It is all a bit laissez faire. This is in contrast to France, where the Académie française does set out rules for French. (They had an earnest discussion a few years ago before pronouncing on what gender "covid" should have. It is la covid, apparently: https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19)

2 hours ago, Externet said:

Hi. Stumbled upon and unsure of its meaning.

What does the word 'constitution' here refers to ? 🤨

And; any majority has to start with one or few use events; does it mean that it is a wrong word until half +1 use such and then becomes right ?

Well the word 'constitution' relates to 'what is' rather than 'what is not'.

So the US constitution is based on the principle that certain rights are available to US citizens.
Other rights or priviledges are not guaranteed, but are not necessarily forbidden.

England has the Magna Carta which is a very primitive guarantess of some rights for some people only.

It is often summarised by lawyers that

The english 'Constitution' says " You may do/have anything not specifically forbidden by Law"

The US constitution say "You may only do what it allows in the Constitution"

Neither is summary is totally true but it does contrast the philosophy behind the difference.
And the differences are becoming more and more blurred as time goes on.

Applied to the English Language it is clear that you cannot found an language 'authority' on what is not', but you can on 'what is'.